TV-14: Best songs about television

When songwriters take on TV, they tend to cast it in negative and neurotic roles. But I won’t hold it against these musicians; few people understand the downside of TV more intimately than a TV critic. I love songs that take to task both TV and the people who surrender too easily to it. We need to be kept on track. Some of the lyrics to these songs are among my slogans, including these by Frank Zappa: “I am the slime from the video / Oozin’ along on your living room floor.” Here are a few of my favorite songs about TV.<br>
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff
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Pictured: David Byrne of Talking Heads at CBGB’s in New York City in 1975, from the documentary video series ‘’Nightclubbing.’’Next

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1. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
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Gil Scott-Heron (1970)
<br>The title has been reused so much that it has become a cliche. But don’t let that obscure the power of this Nixon-era song-poem. It is as strong a political statement as pop culture has known. Scott-Heron, who died last year, delivers biting lines with the directness of a newscaster, telling us that sitting in front of TV won’t bring change and equality. Furthermore, he tells us, TV is softening ugly truths to quell our urge for change. With his early rap-like flow, Scott-Heron unleashes a timeless warning about freedom that resonates with today’s headlines.<br>
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Pictured: Gil Scott-Heron circa 1970.Next

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2. “Found a Job”
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Talking Heads (1978)
<br>Like many songs by the great Talking Heads, “Found a Job” is prescient in its take on American culture. If you closely follow the lyrics, which feature David Byrne’s classic faux-naïve point of view, they anticipate reality TV. A frustrated couple tired of TV fodder decides to make their own show, which makes them happy. The narrator, swept up in a Talking Heads groove, sees their shift as an improvement — but Byrne, as usual, is being ironic. Making TV may be less boring than watching TV, but it has no moral advantage.<br>
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Pictured: Members of the Talking Heads in New York City in 1976, from left: David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Martina Weymouth.Next

Dennis McGuire

3. “Fade Away and Radiate”
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Blondie (1978)
<br>A hauntingly pretty take on the otherworldly impact of watching too much TV. As in many songs about TV, “Fade Away and Radiate” portrays the effects of the “blue blue neon glow” as similar to the effects of drugginess and sleep. The speaker, in the emotional voice of Debbie Harry, is almost moving backward in time, fading away to dormancy as her brainwaves merge with the screen’s beams of light. Robert Fripp plays the trippy guitar on this sad and lovely track.<br>
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Pictured: Blondie in Philadelphia in 1979, from left: Clem Burke, Deborah Harry, Jimmy Destri, Chris Stein, Frank Infante, and Nigel Harrison.Next

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4. “Coffee & TV”
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Blur (1999)
<br>With its irresistible rhythmic drive, this is one of my favorite TV-themed songs. It’s about more than TV; most of the songs listed here use TV as an entry point for ideas about alienation and escape. Graham Coxon’s lyrics are open to interpretation, like most good lyrics; to me, they’re about when the world is too much with you, when you want to retreat with coffee, TV, and someone you love, to reboot. The song’s despair is dominant: “Do you feel like a chain store / Practically floored.” But the hope — “We can start over again” — repeats like a prayer.<br>
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Pictured: From left, Damon Albarn and Alex James of Blur performed in London’s Hyde Park July 2, 2009.Next

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5. “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”
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Bruce Springsteen (1992)
<br>Springsteen’s classic, about the emptiness of the TV universe, seems quaint with its titular chant. We now have hundreds of channels, and there’s always something good on if you have a DVR or computer. But Springsteen’s larger point transcends the facts: TV, like money and mansions, promises gratification and then fails to gratify. To dramatize the speaker’s frustration, Springsteen cites an oft-told story about Elvis Presley shooting up his TV: “I just let it blast /Till my TV lay in pieces there at my feet / And they busted me for disturbing the almighty peace.”<br>
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Pictured: Bruce Springsteen at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, Aug. 29, 2002.Next

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6. “I’m the Slime”
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Frank Zappa (1973)
<br>There is no ambiguity in Zappa’s song about the slime oozing from TV sets. In the lyrics, TV is a “tool of the government,” a mind-controlling box in your living room working to commodify the human race. When the song delivers the slogan, “Don’t touch that dial,” it’s a dehumanizing command. This is a snarky, potent take on the tube, strafed with Zappa’s piercing guitar licks. Be sure to YouTube the live version on “Saturday Night Live” in 1976, with announcer Don Pardo performing with Zappa. <br>
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Pictured: Frank Zappa on Nov. 29, 1974.Next

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7. “Plastic Fantastic Lover”
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Jefferson Airplane (1967)
<br>Marty Balin’s lyrics are a bit purple — “The electrical dust is starting to rust / Her trapezoid thermometer taste” — but that’s what you want in a 1960s psychedelic take on TV as a soul-sucking partner. Some speculate that “Plastic Fantastic Lover” is about a stereo system, or a sex toy; and those valid interpretations add to the meanings and scope of the song. But Balin once said the lyrics were about TV, and the final lines drive that meaning home: “All I see is draining me / On my plastic fantastic lover.”<br>
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Pictured: Jefferson Airplane members in San Francisco, August 3, 1968, from left: Spencer Dryden, Marty Balin, Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, and Jack Casady.Next

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8. “Television, the Drug of the Nation”
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Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (1992)
<br>This dire portrait of “Our United States of Unconsciousness” updates Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” an unambiguous warning cry filled with pop-cultural references and word play. “TV is the place where the pursuit of happiness has become the pursuit of trivia,” Michael Franti sings urgently, “Where toothpaste and cars have become sex objects.’’ The song takes TV to the mat for aiding and abetting ignorance, social numbness, and political corruption.<br>
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Pictured: Michael Franti in a screen grab from Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy’s video for “Television, the Drug of the Nation.”Next

Rogelio Solis/AP/File

9. “TV Talkin’ Song”
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Bob Dylan (1990)
<br>Naturally, Dylan had something to say about the dangers of TV. But the song is not written as a direct screed; the speaker hears a man in Hyde Park lecturing people about the evils of TV. Citing the story about Elvis Presley, the angry man says, “Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out.” The crowd riots and grabs the incendiary guy — an incident that the speaker watches that night on the news. The ironic flourish at the end is a reminder of the all-consuming power of TV; it co-opts even its most vocal adversaries.<br>
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Pictured: Bob Dylan performed in Jackson, Miss., May 17, 2003.Next

Rahav Segev for The New York Tim

10. “Television”
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Robyn Hitchcock (2004)
<br>This is an intimate love song of sorts. The melody is beautiful and sad, like a plea or an apology to a lover — but the loved one is TV, “the devil’s fishbowl.” The singer holds the remote, so in some ways he is in charge; but then the TV is more formidable, with lies that are addictive. Rather than simply trashing TV, Hitchcock is getting at the more complex emotional relationship a person can develop with the box “deep inside” our homes. Lovely harmonies by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings add to the pathos.<br>
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Pictured: Robyn Hitchcock performed at The Grand Ballroom of The Manhattan Center on April 9, 2008.Next

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11. “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night”
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Simon and Garfunkel (1966)
<br>“All is calm, all is bright.” Simon and Garfunkel blow that sedate image wide open, singing the Christmas carol “Silent Night” against a recording of the cold facts of the nightly news from 1966. As the report of anti-war protests and a struggling civil rights bill gets louder and more insistent, the delicately sung song of peace gets softer. “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night” has a simple power, with TV not as the predictable enemy but as a dramatic conduit to the real world — the messenger, not the message.<br>
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Pictured, from left: Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon sang together at the United Center in Chicago on Friday, Oct. 24, 2003.Next

David McNew/REUTERS

12. “My Country”
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Randy Newman (1999)
<br>The sweetly uplifting melody suggests an anthem of pride. But Newman being Newman, he is singing one of his ironic statements about America, in the voice of someone passively grateful for being part of one nation under screens. American families watch TV to withhold feelings; they are groups of lonely TV addicts “watching other people living, seeing other people play, having other voices fill our minds.”<br>
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Pictured: Randy Newman in Anaheim, California, June 13, 2012.Next

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13. “Satellite of Love”
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Lou Reed (1972)
<br>Technically this is a simple song about jealousy, but it’s jealousy fueled by the images on TV. It’s about how what we see on TV — satellites sailing into the sky, for example — doesn’t measure up to the reality here on Earth. “Satellite of Love” is far from a screed or a paean to TV, so much as a glimpse at the impact of the medium’s intensity on ordinary viewers. If you spend too much time watching idealized and pasteurized stories on TV, your real-world perspective may get distorted.<br>
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Pictured: Lou Reed performd at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, June 14, 2012.Next

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14. “Kicking Television”
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Wilco (2005)
<br>TV as addiction? Check. It’s a common theme among the songs about TV. Jeff Tweedy’s version, though, has a twist, as it teases people who are always making self-help pledges. His speaker is kicking many addictions at once, including sloth and shopping. “I’m serious, you’ll see,” he begins over a driving beat, “I’m working on my abs.” No, this isn’t a pro-TV song, so much as a goof on extremes of behavior and people who get sucked into compulsion and self-loathing.<br>
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Pictured: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco performed in St Louis, Missouri on October 4, 2009.Back to the beginning